Henderson Blue paint code or touch-up paint needed

[Donkey Hotey]

The Great, Ongoing Touch-Up Paint Discussion

The question this time: what to do for the Henderson Blue in 2018. Scouring over at the Resource Board, the hot ticket 10+ years ago was Dupli-Color SF GM 393 (General Motors Dark Blue (M) Clearcoat 1989-1984. Well, that's for some pretty old cars and it doesn't seem to be available anymore in touch-up quantities.

Has anyone found anything else close? I have at least one small popped spot of paint on the front fender of 738, next to a rivet and I'd like to touch it up.

[Donkey Hotey]

Alright, nobody been down this road recently? I'll share what I've found as I go then. Maybe somebody else can get something valuable out of this.

I found an online paint source that still carried the mythical late '80s GM Dark Blue Metallic paint and sold it in touchup quantities for only about $25 shipped to my door.

Not wanting to commit it to the bike just yet, I shook the bottle thoroughly, applied a wet coat to a piece of scotch tape and let it dry overnight. I cut the tape with scissors so I had a representative patch of the paint right on the edge and then applied it to the bike. This is the result:



Maybe that's close enough for some people. Maybe it was mixed wrong. Maybe I picked the wrong color. I'm going to say that in really small dots (stone chips) this might not be noticeable but, anything larger and it's going to be obvious.

I'm calling it a bust and moving on to either buying a pint of properly mixed PPG paint or finding a place that can match the paint on the bike.

[wytfut]

Other than my magical paint guy... I don't know an answer. We've got a blue in our stable if you want him to mix you some up...

[Donkey Hotey]

Unless you guys need touch-up paint, I wouldn't bother you. The part about color matching in the past that struck me as odd was that they needed a piece off the vehicle to do a good match. What the heck do they do with whole cars? Just take off the hood or a fender and bring it down? I suppose I could take them the tank but, I honestly don't trust anybody touching something as priceless (to me) as a pristine tank.

If they have a remote camera they can take out to the vehicle and take a sample shot to do the matching, that would make a lot more sense. I haven't looked into it in at least 15 years. I'll give it a shot locally.

If they don't suck at this, I'd also like some Sunburnt Red for a few tiny chips on Molly. No clue where they came from or how they happened but, they're there.

With all that said, your magical paint guy may be worth his weight in gold if this doesn't go better for me.

[wytfut]

I'm just hoping he doesn't retire too soon. He's in range.

Yes, he shoots it to get in the ball park, and then uses the piece as a reference as he mixes.....    He's done me well in the past.

He also did several days of foot work trying to track down those ppg universal codes, when he discovered that they were obsolete and discontinued. I iked that as he is a Dupont shop.. On

[Berlin Bob]

Greg..the closest paint that I have tried was Dupli-color  Gm Indigo Blue (M) ...39,WA  9792   good for small spots ... got it at  Advance Auto very good match , but not perfect

[Donkey Hotey]

Dayumm, Bob, I haven't got dry paint to compare to yet. I put the scotch tape on the bike, put a big wet dot on the tape. Under the flashlight, the sample looks like a hole in the tape. I cannot see a color difference. Outstanding!

I'll report back with pictures in the sun but, I'm going to call this a likely winner. Man, thank you!

[Jumper]

99 B/S is the Blue the same as the 2000?
Jumper

[Berlin Bob]

Yes....  all the blues are the same

[Donkey Hotey]

As promised: here is the follow-up picture of Bob's GM Indigo Blue touch-up paint. Same method as before: wet coat of sample paint on a piece of scotch tape, cut in half and applied to the back of the tank.

At some angles, it's a dead-on match. At other angles I will admit the new blue is just a very slightly richer blue (more color saturation). It's very, very slight. For all I know, it could be the difference of being applied directly to the primer vs the white, shiny Mylar tape.



I'm calling this one good for me. Again: thank you Bob!